Somebody disabled miser mode on de.wikipedia.org in LocalSettings.php. That may have been there for a while, I don't know, it wasn't labeled.
Heavy special pages on de were weighing down the database A LOT, so I've taken it out and locked them off again. Load on suda has fallen from 8-10 to 4-6 and response is much better.
I've also put the locks back on pl, and temporarily disabled the 'magic' parameter for bypassing miser mode.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)